On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:25:21 +0100, Kay Easton
wrote:

In article , Gwenhyffar
Milgi writes

The penultimate project is the garden pond. We recently discovered the
natural waterinlet for it (from a stream) and overflow and have now
been able to reestablish the waterflow into and out of the pond.

I have drastically reduced the growth in the pond, and the water is
clearing up by the day. It is inundated with tadpoles, which I enjoy
watching greatly.

You *lucky* thing! A natural pond :-)

Well, no. It's definitely a man made pond. At least I'm presuming that
pond lining doesn't grow on trees gggg.

However, there is a natural inlet and overflow for the pond. The inlet
is water diverted from a stream (this is the same stream that we take
our drinking water from, we have a private water supply. We take our
water from the top of the ridge, the farmer takes his from slightly
lower for the cattle, and we take our pondwater from the lowest part
of the stream). It enters the pond over a cascade of rocks. When the
water rises above a certain level, the water starts to overflow one
end of the pond which has deliberately been set a bit lower. This
water drains off into a gully, which runs across the field and then
empties into a drainage stream, which eventually ends up in the
estuary.

Since we got it up and running, the pondwater has cleared enough for
us to see down to the bottom. It is an extremely fertile pond though,
the plantlife is thriving to the extent that before we re-established
the watercourse, we had to remove about 2/3 of the plantlife to get
some watersurface back.

The size of the pond did surprise us though, once we started work on
it, removing grass, soil and other things that seemed to indicate dry
land, we realised that the entire pond was rocklined and was twice as
big as we thought it was.

The tadpoles are numerous, it seems every frog/toad/newt in the
neighbourhood deposits its spawn in it (yes, we have newts, and one of
those legless thingies). In the early part of February, the entire
pond was covered in spawn. Then the frost hit, and I thought we had
lost it all, but there are still uncountable numbers of tadpoles. And
lots of other goodies, bugs that run upside down, little white jumping
thingies, things that look like a stick with fins and much, much more.

We'd like something that is mainly vegetarian, as the plantlife is
really, really well established and needs a herd of little somethings
in there.

I've been doing a websearch, and lots of places recommend goldfish or
something called Tench as a bottomfeeder. There's a place in Conwy
that looks on the surface of it as if it could supply what I need.

"My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night
but ah my foes and oh my friends -- it gives a lovely light"